SolveYourProblem
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Series
Tell Me: How Do Search Engines Work?
Many people wonder how search engines really
work. Although the details are complex, this article aims
to give you some insight into the process without getting
too technical. Read on...
Most
search engines have three parts: a crawler, an index,
and a search interface. Let's look at each part individually,
to get a better understanding of them. Each part has its
own role to play in the process, with all the parts working
together to make searches possible.
The
Crawler
Also known as a 'spider' or 'bot', this part of the search
engine wanders the web, following links and picking up information
for its database. Crawlers do most of their work at times
of the day when search engines are less busy, but they typically
visit frequently updated pages more often. This is something
to keep in mind when you're working on your pages. As you
may want to perform updates locally and update them when
they have been finished rather than updating bits and pieces
and hoping that the search engine runs into the correct version.
Also, crawlers ignore some things: your site's code, for
example. Your site's title and text - your 'content' - is
the most important thing to a crawler. The fastest way to
raise your site’s search engine ranking for specific key
words is to implement them into your title and your content.
The
Index
Once the crawler has collected all that text, it is then
stored and indexed. This allows people searching for keywords
and phrases to get results relating to what they were searching
for - their search results. Most sites will incorporate rating
systems such as Google Page Ranks or Alexa rankings in positioning
your site. These ratings are used to attempt to ensure that
sites that are important receive more traffic than unimportant
sites.
To
see this in action, go to a search engine and type in a
word. You'll see some text on the page saying
something
like "results 1-10 of 345,000". This means that
the search engine's index contains 345,000 pages it believes
are related to the word you typed. If you wanted to, you
could look through all these pages to find the information
you're looking for.
In order to understand rating systems more thoroughly consider
your own site. When you place links on your site you generally
due so in order to increase your users understanding of the
content of your site. If every site in a particular field
links to a particular site, this site is probably very important
to that field and should, therefore, be listed highly in
the lists of search engine results. Thus the basic ideology
of Google Page Ranks.
Consider again, a site that receives a great deal of traffic.
If a site is receiving loads and loads of traffic, it probably
has some information or service that is very important to
its users. Alexa ratings attempt to estimate the amount of
traffic that a particular site gets and compare it to the
amount of traffic that other sites get. The closer that a
site is to the most trafficked site on the internet, the
more likely it is to have important content if it is relevant
to the search query.
The
Interface
Search engines provide a public interface for users who
want to find information on the web. They can type the word
or phrase they're searching for, and the interface will run
an algorithm to find the pages relevant to their search and
display them.
These algorithms are an important part of the SEO (search
engine optimization) business, and the search engines are
constantly changing them. You'll notice when the algorithms
change, as the rankings of your website will change with
them.
No
two search engines are the same. They all work differently,
with their own unique features, and they will all respond
to your website in their own way. You should familiarize
yourself with the most popular search engines, to better
understand how each of them works.
The most
popular search engines today include Google, Yahoo,
AltaVista, AllTheWeb, MSN, and Ask Jeeves. There are many
other search engines available, though, and you shouldn't
ignore them altogether.
When you submit your website to the search engines, there's
no way of knowing when they might add it to their indexes.
Since each search engine has its own crawling and indexing
methods, you can't be sure how long it might take. In some
cases, you might see results within a week, but don't count
on it - it may take several weeks or even months before you
see anything.
It's not easy to get a high ranking unless you spend some
time on it, and learn the proper methods. When you take the
time and do some research, you'll find that it's not as confusing
as you first thought. Learning the basics will enhance your
experience more than you would have thought possible.
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